You are here: CSU, Chico | English Department | Undergraduate Programs | Course Descriptions | Fall 2008

Fall 2008

The following are the course numbers of the classes offered through the English Department (listed within The University Catalog under ENGL). Each number will send you to a brief description of the course, when available.
130	203	220	230	240	251
252	253	254	258	260	264
303	321	327	332	333	335
340	341	342	353	354	356
357	358	359	360	371	372
375	415	416	421	431	441
445	449	450	451	452	454
456	458	459	461	462	467
470	471	475	476	477

English 130: Academic Writing

Section(s):
Professor: Susan Aylworth

As described in the University Catalog, this course offers you, "Instruction and practice in writing university-level expository prose." Thus English 130 will introduce you to tools for close reading and rhetorical analysis of both written and visual texts and will help you develop and practice your skills at developing these texts. My goals for this course are:

To help you develop skills for reading and analysis of college-level texts, both written and visual;
To give you practice and opportunities to develop your own skills in writing academic prose at a college level;
To help you understand why some documents communicate successfully and others do not;
To give you the skills to produce successful academic documents.

Most reading, research and writing will be done outside of class with communication through Vista. Class time will be a mix of large group discussion, small group and individual work on reading, research, writing and revision, formal and informal in-class presentations and, rarely, lecture.

Text(s):

Samuel Cohen, 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology, 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007.
Andrea Lunsford, Easy Writer, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace…one school at a time. (This is the Chico State Book in Common for 2008-2009. Find it in the Galleria section of the bookstore.)
You will participate in the Town Hall meeting at the end of the term.

Section(s): ESL
Professor: Linda Rogers

English 130 E is a GE course that introduces you to the challenges of university-level writing, reading, critical thinking, and discussion in a manner that is engaging, dynamic, and rewarding. This is a learner-centered course that will improve your ability to criticize, analyze, and advocate ideas and beliefs with persuasive force.

English 203: Shakespeare On Film

Section(s): 1
Professor: Robert O'Brien

From the silent-movie era to the present, filmmakers have interpreted Shakespearean drama. Some of these interpretations have been lost, others are of dubious quality, but a large number are masterpieces of cinematic art.

In this course, you'll study some of the best Shakespeare films made since the Second World War. By the end of the semester, you'll have gained a deeper understanding of both film and Shakespearean drama.

Classes will be a mixture of lectures, discussions, and film showings. Outside of class, you'll read scenes and passages from the plays; you'll also write essays responding to the readings and films. You'll be graded on the essays, class participation, and a mid-term and final examination.

English 220: Creative Writing

Section(s): 1, 2
Professor: Rob Davidson

English 220 is designed to introduce you to the writing of poetry and fiction. You will be asked to write literary work in this class (i.e., work that is serious, ambitious, well-crafted, contemporary, adult-oriented, emotionally engaging, and so forth). Work that does not aspire to the literary is outside the domain of this class. This includes literature for children, the sentimental romance, formulaic mystery writing, and the like. We shall study writing techniques and craft in each genre by reading each other’s work and by studying the work of established authors. Expect to do a lot of writing and revision.
English 220 is a General Education course (GE C-2). Through the study of creative writing, this class will help you to:

Improve reading, writing, critical thinking, discussion and speaking skills; and the ability to access, evaluate, and apply information
Instill efficient, effective learning skills
Enhance general knowledge about creative writing, literature, and broader questions related to these fields
Broaden knowledge about diversity both within and without the world of creative writing
Help provide coherence, connectedness, and commonality within your other areas of study

Last, each student is required to attend four out-of-class literary events. These events can include author readings, dramatic performances, poetry open-mikes, and so forth.

Text(s):

Richard Ford, ed. The Granta Book of the American Short Story. Reprint ed. London: Granta Books, 1998.
J. D. McClatchy, ed. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 2003.

Texts will be available at the Associated Students Bookstore in Bell Memorial Union.

Section(s): 7, 8
Professor: Paul Eggers

Aims: This course will introduce you to the writing of serious contemporary poetry and fiction. We will study writing techniques and craft in each genre by producing our own creative work, reading and discussing each other's work, and studying the work of established writers. No previous experience with creative writing is assumed.

Text(s):

Course packet available at Mr. Kopy.
Figure around $30 or so for photocopying copies of your drafts for class distribution.

English 230: Intro to Technical Writing

Section(s): 1
Professor: Susan Aylworth

As described in the University Catalog, this course offers you, "A study of technical writing and presentation skills in business and scientific environments, including audience analyses, writing processes, genres of technical and business discourse, visual communication, collaboration, professional responsibility, clear and correct expression" (368). Thus English 230 introduces you to the wide range of practices that make up the field called technical writing. My goals for this course are:

To help you develop rhetorical awareness of the document genres used in your field;
To give you a general overview of principles of document design;
To give you opportunities to develop the reading, writing and research practices required to produce those documents.

Most reading, research and document development will be done outside of class with communication through Vista. Class time will be a mix of large group discussions, small group and individual work on writing, research and revision, formal and informal in-class presentations and, rarely, lecture.

Text(s):

Alred, Gerald J., Charles T. Brusaw and Walter E. Oliu (eds.). Handbook of Technical Writing, 8th Ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
Williams, Robin, The Non-Designer’s Design Book, 2nd Ed. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2004.

English 240: Introduction to Literature

English 251: African American Literature

English 252: American Indian Literature

Section(s): 1
Professor: Susan Aylworth

As described in the University Catalog, this course offers you, "A study of the oral and written literature of the American Indian and of related historical and critical materials." Thus English 252 will introduce you to the patterns, archetypes and stories familiar to the tribal people of North America from the oral tradition through novels, poems and stories written by today's best-known Native American writers. My goals for this course are:

To help you develop an awareness of tribal story-tellers in the context of their cultures and in the context of all human communication and story-telling;
To give you tools for understanding and appreciating the literature and symbols of people from a very different cultural/ethnic background;
To help you understand the traditional context of the stories produced by modern tribal writers.

Text(s):

Supplement available at Mr. Kopy.
Theodora Kroeber, The Inland Whale.
John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks.
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine.
Paula Gunn Allen, Spider Woman's Granddaughters.
Patricia Riley, ed., Growing Up Native American.

English 253: Asian American Literature

Section(s): 1
Professor: Peggy DuFon

In Asian American literature, we will read novels, short stories and poems by Asian-American writers from a range of ethnic backgrounds from across Asia (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Filipino, etc.), and explore a number of themes including intergenerational conflict, the treatment of women, the immigrant experience, political context and its affect on the lives of the characters, parent-child relationships, etc. Besides the assigned readings, students will read additional material as they conduct an inquiry project in order to gain a deeper understanding of a particular author, country, region, or theme. The texts we will be reading will be chosen taking into consideration recommendations from students who have taken the class in previous semesters. Any student who plans to take the course in the fall can also contact me prior to June 1st (mdufon@csuchico.edu) with any recommendations for books written by Asian American authors they would like to study as part of the course. As an Area C-2 General Education course, four cultural events that focus on Asian/Asian American culture will be included and connected to the course readings.

English 254: Chicano/Latina/o Literature

English 258: World Literature

English 260: Great Books

Section(s): 1, 2
Professor: Geoffrey Baker

The goal of this course is to introduce you to novels, poetry, and drama selected from the world’s great literature, a body of work that stretches back thousands of years. On your own, you will be expected to read each text carefully. As a class, we will attempt to place each work in its larger context and see what it seems to want to say to its reader and what tools it uses to say it. Ultimately, a literature class is always about learning to read and write critically. While it’s always fun to read great books, this course is also an opportunity to hone skills vital to whichever field we choose professionally.

Assignments will include a midterm and a final exam; 2 short papers; quizzes; and regular attendance and participation.

In addition to very brief excerpted portions of Dante’s La Vita Nuova, Plato’s Republic, Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, and the Mu’allaqat of Imru’ al-Qais, there are the following required texts:

Plato, Symposium (Hackett), ISBN: 0872200760
Dante, Inferno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), ISBN: 0374524521
Molière, The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays (Molière), ISBN: 0192833413
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Oxford), ISBN: 0192833669
William Butler Yeats, Selected Poems and Four Plays (Scribners), ISBN: 0684826461
Albert Camus, The Plague (Vintage), ISBN: 0679720219
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North (Heinemann), ISBN: 0435900668

English 264: American Ethnic/Regional Writers

English 303: Survey of American Film

Section(s): 1
Professor: Lynn Houston

Women and Film
This course explores the representation of women as subject and objects in the history of American film. In addition, the course will offer students some historical background in Hollywood and independent films written and/or directed by women. Readings from feminist theory and feminist film criticism, as well as from scholars in American studies, will help students analyze questions of gender, race, class, and sexuality when discussing and writing about American film. The latter portion of the course will focus on defining the idea of the “chick flick,” especially through watching adaptations of contemporary novels known as “chick lit.”

English 321: Fiction Writing

Section(s): 1, 2
Professor: Rob Davidson

English 321 is an intensive workshop-based course in the writing of the literary short story. You will be asked to write “literary” work in this class (i.e., work that is serious, ambitious, well-crafted, contemporary, adult-oriented, emotionally engaging, and so forth). Work that does not aspire to the literary is outside the domain of this class. This includes literature for children, the sentimental romance, formulaic mystery writing, and the like. We shall study writing techniques and craft by reading each other’s work and by studying the work of established authors. Expect to do a lot of writing and revision.

Please note that this course is specifically designed with the short story in mind. As a general rule, a short story is a self-contained prose narrative that does not exceed twenty-five double-spaced pages (roughly 6,000 words). “Long” short stories, novellas, and novel excerpts are outside the domain of this class.

Text(s):

T. Coraghessan Boyle, ed, Doubletakes: Pairs of Contemporary Short Stories. Boston: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2004.
Raymond Carver, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? 1976. New York: Vintage, 1992.

The texts will be available at the Associated Students Bookstore in Bell Memorial Union.

English 327: Creative Nonfiction

Section(s): 1, 2
Professor: Paul Eggers

Aims: In this course, we'll draft, workshop, and revise three substantial pieces of creative nonfiction (definition: a story that uses most of the same techniques / assumptions as a fiction story, but that is true as opposed to made up. It's a fact-based story that acknowledges and encourages the presence and imagination of the author, as well as the unreliability of memory). In addition to writing and workshopping, we'll look at essays by some of our best established writers and discuss theoretical matters related to the field.

Text(s):

Bill Roorbach, The Art of Truth: Essays in creative nonfiction.
Various handouts.

English 332: Intro to Literacy Studies

Section(s): 1
Professor: Judith Rodby

English 333: Advanced Composition for Future Teachers

Section(s): 72
Professor: Susan Aylworth

As described in the University Catalog, this course offers you, “Advanced practice in writing and in using writing in the classroom for single- and multiple-subject credential candidates.” Thus English 333 is a skills course, allowing you to practice using the tools you have learned for close reading and rhetorical analysis of both written and visual texts and offering further help in developing these skills. We also prepare you to use these writing skills with students in a future teaching career. My goals for this course are:

To help you to polish and further develop your skills for reading and analysis of college-level texts, both written and visual;
To give you practice and opportunities to develop your own skills in writing advanced academic prose;
To help you better understand why some documents communicate successfully and others do not;
To give you the skills to help you apply what you have learned when you are teaching future students.

In the fully online section, students do all the reading, writing, and study outside of class using Vista, take quizzes and assessments via Vista, and submit their writing to discussion boards for comment by other students and the professor. There are no face-to-face meetings for this class.

Text(s):

Wendy Bishop and James Strickland, editors. The Subject is Writing: Essays by Teachers and Students, Fourth Edition. Boynton-Cook Heinemann, 2006. ISBN: 0-86709-586-5, paperback.
Lester Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook, 3rd edition. Longman/Pearson Education, Inc., 2006. ISBN: 0-321-20259-7, paperback.
You should also own a good dictionary.

English 335: Rhetoric and Writing

English 340: Approaches to Literary Genres

Section(s): 3
Professor: John Traver

This course introduces you to several literary genres (fiction, poetry, and drama) and provides you with a set of analytical skills and strategies for interpreting literary texts. You will learn to recognize common genre conventions, as well as how skilled authors may work within (or even defy) these conventions in ways which surprise us. You will also become familiar with common literary terminology and learn how to construct an effective literary argument.

Note: because this course provides important preparation for the English major, it will be writing intensive. Assignments will include the following: a midterm and a final; two papers; shorter writing assignments (such as postings on vista); quizzes; memorization of one poem of your choice; class participation.

Text(s):

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Ed. Marilyn Gaull.
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, ed. Peter G. Beidler.
Michael Meyer, The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, ed.

English 341: Reading Literature for Future Teachers

Section(s): 1
Professor: Peter Kittle

This course focuses on three essential ideas, all encompassed in the course title: reading, literature, and teaching. In the course, students will read a variety of literature (fiction, drama, poetry), along with texts about reading processes and teaching literacy to elementary-age students. Assignments include group presentations, exams, online postings, and
book-related projects.

This is a "hybrid" class, meeting once per week face-to-face, with additional course work completed through a variety of online learning tools. Internet access is required.

Section(s): 72
Professor: Lynn Elliott

English 341 is a study of literary concepts and conventions. In the class we will ask, besides questions about the form of the various genres, what is the relation between literature and life? What questions does literature ask, and how does it attempt to answer them? We will read a variety of genres of children¹s literature: fiction, drama, poetry, and fairy tales.

In addition we will, in this class, explore literacy, specifically what elements combine to create good and not so good readers.

English 342: Literature of the Child

English 353: Multicultural Literature

English 354: Classical Literature

English 356: Survey of British Literature

Section(s): 2
Professor: John Traver

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” -Sir Francis Bacon

This course provides you with a full-course meal of British literature. We will survey the development of British literature, beginning with the Medieval period (with works such as Beowulfand The Canterbury Tales), continuing through the Renaissance and early Seventeenth Century (with authors such as Shakespeare and Donne), and concluding our repast with the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (with works such as Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels). In order to survey such a wide-spanning period of history, our pace will have to be fast (i.e., a lot of texts will be “tasted” or hastily “swallowed”). As a result, you will not only discover how British literary traditions develop over time, but also be introduced to a variety of delectable texts for future periods of digestion.

Assignments will include the following: a mid-term examination and a final; response papers and vista postings; poetry memorization; quizzes; class participation.

Text(s):

Volumes 1-3 of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature.
Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, ed. Jessica Richard (Broadview).
(Note that all 4 Broadview texts are available at a discount when purchased together.)

English 357: Survey of British Literature

Section(s): 1
Professor: Teresa Huffman Traver

This course provides an overview of two centuries of literature, from the Romantic era to the twentieth century. You will learn something about the literary movements and historical contexts that shaped the literature of this time periods. Readings will include poetry, non-fiction prose, drama, and samples of short and long fiction.

Note: rather than writing two or three “major” papers, in this class you will produce a series of two-page argumentative papers in response to specific works. This does not mean that the writing load for this class is any less than for another class, however. (You will produce between 14-16 pages of writing altogether!) All it means is that the writing is distributed throughout the semester.

Text(s):

We will use selected volumes of Broadview Anthology of British Literature as our major text, with additional supplements as needed.

Assignments: Midterm and final exam; frequent short papers (see above); occasional quizzes. Class participation and attendance are required.

English 358: Survey of American Literature

English 359: Survey of American Literature

Section(s): 1
Professor: Lynn Houston

This course surveys American literature from the time of the Civil War until the present day. Significant changes in modes of literary and cultural representation occurred during the almost 150 years covered by this survey course. As the purpose of this class is to introduce you to the basics of American literature, we cover an extraordinarily wide range of material, so reading selections tend to be long and we tend to move at a rapid pace. The reason we read excerpts from longer selections and take a faster pace than most literature courses is to allow us to cover as many different authors as possible in order to give you the most comprehensive view of the later history of American literature. Out of this view, you should develop a sense of the importance of the various contexts (social, cultural, history of ideas, literary movements and periods, etc.) out of which American literature is produced. More importantly, the chronological approach to the course material should foster in you a desire to reflect on the historical contexts of the themes, dilemmas, and ways of living presented in the literary texts. Some of the themes we will be addressing in this course include: women’s equality, immigrant struggles, the American identity, the impact of industrialization, and the human relationship to the natural world. The most important learning objective in this course is for you to develop critical skills by which to closely read and interpret shorter passages from literary selections that you are able to put into dialogue with a larger historical and cultural context of literary production.

English 360: Women Writers

Section(s): 1
Professor: Lynn Houston

The material for this course focuses largely on late twentieth-century British and American novels known as “chick lit.” In this class, students will identify the major defining characteristics of the genre (owing much to the bildungsroman form) of contemporary fiction called “chick lit” (a novel in which twenty- or thirty-something career women deal humorously with the ups and downs of their romantic relationships). Students should also gain a sense of the origin/history of this genre as it arises out of the marriage plot of eighteenth and nineteenth century British novels written by women, as well as a sense of the relationship that chick lit has to the history of feminism and feminist writing. Our debates surrounding the nature and features of "chick lit" will be the organizing elements of this course. We will draw in other materials that will also help students to gain a larger sense of the history of women's writing and of feminist literary criticism and theory. Some possible readings include: Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Good in Bed, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Sex and the City (yes, it was originally a book!), etc., as well as works of “ethnic chick lit” by authors such as Kim Wong Keltner, Terry McMillan, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez.

English 371: Principles of Language

English 372: Pedagogical Grammar

Section(s): 1, 2
Professor: Graham Thurgood

English 375: Introduction to English Grammar

Section(s): 2
Professor: Lois Bueler

English 375 is an introductory course in descriptive English grammar. It is designed to help you see what it is we are doing when we speak and write English—how the language is built, how it puts its words together to make meaning, what kinds of variations sound right to us as English speakers. Students in the course read and talk about how the English grammatical system works and they practice a lot—analyzing what they read and hear, composing various kinds of structures and learning how to describe them, and explaining how the structures speakers and writers choose affect how we understand and respond to their work.

English 415: Literary Editing

Section(s): 1
Professor: Casey Huff

This course provides a study of and workshop in the editing of literary magazines, manuscripts, and other literary materials. Practice in selection, evaluation, copy editing, and production. Class publishes Watershed literary magazine. This is a good introduction into the field of literary editing. 3.0 hours discussion, 2.0 hours activity.

Prerequisite: ENGL 220 (may be taken concurrently).

Text(s):

Watershed, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Spring 2008)
Cory & Slesinger, Spreading the Word
Slesinger, The Whole Story
A literary magazine of your choice. Plan to look at several issues. Taylor 107 has multiple issues of many literary magazines.

English 416: Editing for Publication

Section(s): 1
Professor: Paul Eggers

Lecture/discussion with extensive practical application in copyediting magazine and book manuscripts for publication. Students will copyedit manuscripts in production at a magazine publisher and a book publisher.

Prerequisites: ENGL 335 or ENGL 375 (may be taken concurrently).

Text(s):

Amy Einsohn, The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications
Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition

English 421: Advanced Fiction Writing

English 431: Theory/Practice in Tutoring Composition

English 441: Shakespeare

Section(s): 1, 2
Professor: Robert O'Brien

'Tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.'

In this course, we will read plays from four genres—comedy, history, tragedy, and romance—following Shakespeare's career, with some digressions, from A Midsummer Night's Dream(1594-96) to The Winter's Tale (1609). Reading these plays well means producing them in your mind's theater. This mental production demands considerable imagination and concentration, but the more you know about the plays, and the more plays you read, the easier it becomes.

Classes will be a mixture of lectures, discussions, and scene readings. You will write some short essays and a term paper and take an early-term and a final examination.

English 445: Early British Literature

Section(s): 1
Professor: Harriet Spiegel

English 449: The Romantic Period

Section(s): 1
Professor: John Traver

In an age of constant revolution and dramatic social change, romantic-era writings hotly contested the future of British politics and of British poetry: as the French Revolution inspires discourses on the universal “Rights of Man,” William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge argue for a poetic voice which adopts the “real language” of everyday people. We will consider this intersection between political and artistic concerns as we discuss a number of prominent poets in the Romantic era, including William Blake, Robert Burns, the “Lake Poets” (e.g., William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge), and the “Second Generation” (e.g., Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats), as well as re-discovered female poets such as Anna Barbauld and Charlotte Smith. In addition to prose selections from Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Thomas De Quincey’s The Confessions of an Opium-Eater, we’ll also consider some novels, most likely including Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, and Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey.

Assignments will include the following: a mid-term and a final; one short paper and one longer paper; short writing assignments and/or vista; a class presentation; memorization of one poem of your choice; class participation.

Note: This course can be counted as either a period or genres course.

English 450: The Victorian Period

Section(s): 1
Professor: Teresa Huffman Traver

Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901, a time when many of works we now think of as “classics” of British literature appeared. This course provides students with exposure to (and understanding) of the literature and culture of the Victorian era. We’ll read a broad range of Victorian literature, including non-fiction prose (essays), poetry, drama, and both short and long fiction, but we will also pay attention to the broader cultural context in which these literary works appear. The course will also familiarize you with some of the kinds of criticism produced by Victorian studies scholars.

Prerequisites: ENGL 340 and 356.

Text(s):

Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Era.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. (Bedford Edition.)
Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist. (Norton Critical Edition)
George Eliot. Silas Marner. (Penguin Classics)
Ellen Wood/ Lisa Evans. East Lynne. (Oberon Modern Plays)

Assignments: Mid-term and final exam; three five-page papers; additional short assignments and occasional quizzes. Class participation and attendance are required.

English 451: Modern Poetry

Section(s): 1
Professor: Jeanne Clark

English 452: Development of British Drama

Section(s): 1
Professor: Lois Bueler

In English 452 we will explore the drama of Great Britain from its beginnings in medieval pageantry and liturgy, through the effects of the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman drama, and into the explosion of highly sophisticated and popular professional theater in the Renaissance. We will learn about the changes in theatrical traditions created by the closing of the theaters in 1642 and the new forms, including the introduction of female actors, that accompanied reopening at the Restoration. In the 18th century we will meet more innovations, including many women playwrights, and will end, appropriately, with the first play written by an American to be professionally performed. Throughout we will enjoy tracing the traditions of character types (rakes and dolts, heroines and villains, the manipulators and the manipulated) and of plot structures and themes (dramas of love and courtship, of strife and reconciliation, of low life and high life, of temptation and exuberant celebration).

English 454: Comparative Literature

Section(s): 1
Professor: Geoff Baker

“Keeping It Unreal: Natural and Supernatural from Frankenstein to Stephen King”

In her preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley says that she wants this “ghost story” to “speak to the mysterious fears of our nature” and “make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.” In other words, she really wants this very unreal fiction to feel real enough to really scare us, in a real way. Tzvetan Todorov, a later theorist of the fantastic in literature, similarly links the real and unreal when he claims that, “far from being a praise of the imaginary, the literature of the fantastic posits the majority of a text as belonging to reality.” Why do fantastic fictions go to such great lengths to seem real? Does the rise of this sort of fiction parallel the rise of literary realism? Does it overlap with the process of secularization in western culture? Does western literature in the age of imperialism tend to represent the supernatural as non-western or the non-western as supernatural? Is the fantastic a natural fictional response to very real cultural shifts?

In this course, we will investigate the relationship between the real and the unreal; the natural, the unnatural, and the supernatural; and fantasy and fiction, through readings of some classic novels, novellas, and short stories. Assignments will include: regular attendance and participation in class discussion; contribution to a group presentation; brief writing assignments; and a final research paper.

This course satisfies period (19th century) or genre (novel) requirements toward the English major.

In addition to very brief essays by Tzvetan Todorov, Sigmund Freud, and Max Weber, texts will be chosen from the work of Mary Shelley, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Washington Irving, Honoré de Balzac, Edgar Allen Poe, George Sand, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Prosper Mérimée, Émile Zola, H. Rider Haggard, Theodor Fontane, Bram Stoker, Alejo Carpentier, Karen Blixen, Isabel Allende, and Stephen King.

English 456: The British Novel

Section(s): 1
Professor: Teresa Huffman Traver

This course, as the catalog says, is a study in the Victorian novel. We'll read a wide range of novels, including examples of the social problem novel, domestic realism, and the Victorian Gothic. The reading load will be heavy, but the texts will be rewarding: in this class, you’ll encounter rioting among workers, spontaneous combustion, and vampire invasions, to say nothing of love which extends beyond the grave. Along the way, we’ll also take a glance at some influential criticism in the areas of Victorian studies and the novel.

Prerequisites: ENGL 340 and 356.

Text(s):

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. Bedford Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. (WH)
Charles Dickens, Bleak House. Norton Critical Edition. (BH)
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South. Norton Critical Editions. (NS)
Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady. (Penguin)
Bram Stoker, Dracula. Bedford Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. (D)

Assignments: Mid-term and final exams; three five-page papers; occasional quizzes and short assignments. Class participation and attendance are required.

English 458: American Literature-Beginning to 1850s

English 459: American Literature-1850 to 1945

Section(s): 1
Professor: Aiping Zhang

This course will introduce you to the major issues, themes and genres in American literature between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War II. Through a selected and in-depth reading of various works, we will examine the major literary movements, schools, and inventions, such as Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Imagism, with which the writers on our reading list were involved, and find out how they redefined, enriched and expanded both the "myth" and the literary canon of America. Group presentations/activities will be organized to encourage the students' participation in discussion.

The reading list includes Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives, Jean Toomer’s Cane and a short anthology of poetry edited by Robert DiYanni, Modern American Poets.

English 461: Modern Novel

English 462: Study in Major American Authors

Section(s): 1
Professor: Andrea Lerner

This semester Major American Authors will explore key figures in modern and contemporary American literature. We'll be reading writers including Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich, Norman Mailer, Joan Dideon and Barbara Kingsolver. (Some substitutions may be made early in the semester according to student interest.)

English 467: Teaching Multicultural Literature

English 470: Second Language Acquisition

English 471: Intensive Theory & Practice, Second Language Acquisition

English 475: History of the English Language

Section(s): 1
Professor: Sarah Trechter

English 476: Phonological Analysis

Section(s): 1
Professor: Ela Thurgood

English 476 is a class for those who are interested in linguistics, who have taken a couple of linguistics courses. Please contact Ela Thurgood (ethurgood@csuchico.edu) if you have questions or would like to know more about the course.

English 477: Semantics: Language and Meaning

Section(s): 1
Professor: Saudra Wright